


Oil and Canvas

by Eggling



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: M/M, the two/jamie is very incidental this is a victoria fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:27:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25708921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eggling/pseuds/Eggling
Summary: She was brave – she had to be brave – she had heard it a hundred times over, and repeated it to herself a thousand more.Haunted by her mother's portrait and her father's death, Victoria can't quite keep her pain to herself.
Relationships: Second Doctor/Jamie McCrimmon
Kudos: 12





	Oil and Canvas

**Author's Note:**

> on [tumblr](https://the--highlanders.tumblr.com/post/625524534411460608/oil-and-canvas-eggling-doctor-who-archive-of).

_A small, dark room. She sat alone, skirts spilling around her onto the cold floor, every crease and fold cast into stark relief by even colder moonlight. Black lines were drawn across her, and she knew without looking that they were shadows falling from bars across the window. Her hands were bruised from shaking them, her throat scratchy from screaming for help. But she was quiet now. She had scrabbled at every corner, broken every hairpin trying to pick the lock. There was nothing left to do but be silent, and be brave._

_Looking up, she saw a mirror, and her eyes met with those of her reflection. She studied herself, turning this way and that, adjusting her hair and schooling her expression into one of dignity and composure. She was brave – she had to be brave – she had heard it a hundred times over, and repeated it to herself a thousand more. But the image of her was beginning to warp into something new, the clean lines blurring, the surface of the mirror becoming oil and canvas. She recognised it before it had fully taken form, and opened her mouth to scream, but no noise came -_

Her eyes jolted open, and she sat up in bed, staring wildly out into the darkness. There was no moonlight here, only a projection of the stars above her bed, and the fabric pooled around her was blankets, not a stolen dress. Slowly, her heart slowed in its pounding, and she allowed herself to relax, though she did not slump.

 _It was a dream_ , she told herself sternly. _Only a dream._

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she caught sight of her own face, smiling out at her from a picture frame on her dresser. She had been happy then, sandwiched between the Doctor and Jamie, clutching some sort of greasy, messy alien pie in one hand. But the thought of looking at herself turned her stomach, the memory of the portrait still so fresh in her mind, and she dragged herself out of bed to turn the picture towards the wall.

 _The portrait_. She had all but forgotten about it, over the past – week? Two weeks? She found she did not know. They had been whisked from one place to another so quickly that the memory of it had faded, and in the brief moments she had thought of it, she had wondered if it might vanish from her entirely. How foolish of her. Oh, she had loved her mother dearly, or loved other people’s memories of her, but the sight of the portrait would never leave her, an older version of herself staring down at her with smothering kindness. Father would never have heard a word against it, but…

Clasping her hands together, she shook herself, dragging her thoughts away from her home and back into the TARDIS. A drink of water, that was what she needed. It was a perfectly sensible thing for a brave young lady to fetch for herself in the middle of the night. She eased open the door and picked her way along the corridor, half-leaping between the dim patches of light that emerged from nowhere to light her path to the kitchen. The TARDIS purred a little as she pushed open the kitchen door, and she bit her lip, glancing around at the walls dubiously before she stepped inside. Ordinarily she paid no mind to the Doctor treating the ship as if it were alive, but even she could not deny that the ship seemed eerily conscious at times.

She rummaged through the cupboards for a glass, discarding a few that were a little dusty before settling on one. Its scratched plastic surface was painted with stars, their edges chipped and their brightness muted by the blue light. She turned the glass back and forth under the flow of the tap, watching their shadows dance across the sink. Behind her, the door creaked a little, and she frowned. There was no draft to blow it ajar, not on board the TARDIS. Turning, she saw a dark figure standing in the doorway and let out a shriek, dropping the glass with a resounding clang.

It took a moment for her to realise that the other person had cried out too, and she shut her mouth abruptly, staring at them. Even if they were a ghost, any ghost that was as frightened of her as she was of them could hardly pose a threat. As she stepped closer, she realised that it was Jamie, bleary and rumpled but his eyes bright with alarm.

“Ye scared me half tae death,” he complained, ambling over to join Victoria by the sink. “What are ye doin’ up?”

“You’re up, aren’t you?” Victoria retorted. She fished her glass out of the sink, wiping away some of the water on the outside with her finger before shrugging and setting it underneath the tap again. “I wanted some water, that’s all.”

“Oh, aye. Aye, me too.” Jamie nodded so earnestly that she could not help but doubt him. “Have ye -” He bent his head to ruffle the hair at the back of his neck, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. “I mean – have ye been sleepin’ alright, Victoria?”

The question caught her off-guard, and she blinked at him. “Sleeping alright?”

“Aye, ye know...” Jamie gestured around them. “It takes a wee bit of gettin’ used to, this place.”

 _Anything would be comfortable after that night on Skaro_ , Victoria thought. _Or the one on Telos_. Her mind danced briefly to the weeks she had spent locked in Maxtible’s house, alone but for the occasional Dalek, but she pushed the memory away. With a start, she realised that she had hesitated too long, and Jamie was watching her expectantly.

“I’ve slept fine,” she said brusquely. “And I’d rather like to get back to it, if you don’t mind.”

“Aye, aye, ‘course.” Jamie shuffled away, clearing her path to the door. She tiptoed past him, feeling the burn of his eyes on her back. “Victoria?”

“Yes?”

“Ye forgot your water.”

Scowling, she marched over to the sink to snatch it up. Something about the way Jamie was speaking to her made her spine prickle, as if he thought she would shatter if he spoke too loud. She longed to hurry back to bed, to curl up beneath the covers and sleep and not dream until the TARDIS shifted into dawn. “Goodnight,” she said firmly, wrenching open the door – and bumped straight into the Doctor.

Water slopped out of her glass and onto his shirt, but he simply let out a surprised chuckle, resting his hands on her shoulders gently and looking past her to Jamie. “I woke up and you weren’t there,” he said, not a little plaintively. Only then did Victoria notice that his eyes were still half-shut, his hair ruffled and pyjamas crumpled in a way that made him seem even more disorderly than usual.

“I wasnae going tae be long,” Jamie said, grinning.

“It was cold,” the Doctor protested. Jamie pulled a face at Victoria, his frustration clearly tempered by fondness, and the Doctor followed his gaze down to her as if noticing her for the first time. “Good gracious!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing out of bed at this hour, Victoria?”

Victoria raised the now-half-empty glass in her hand. “Getting some water.”

A long silence stretched across the room. She shuffled from side to side as if to push past the Doctor, but he remained still, blocking the door and exchanging an unreadable look with Jamie over her head. “Victoria, dear,” he said at last. “You do know you can tell us if there’s a problem, don’t you?” His words were tentative, but without that awful gentleness, smoothing over her irritation.

“Of course I do.” She flashed him a fake smile, then covered a very real yawn. “But it is getting rather late.”

The Doctor hesitated, squinting down at her for a long moment. For all their bleariness, his eyes were piercing, and she squirmed a little under his gaze. She had pinned butterflies with her father when she was a girl – the memory sprung bright and vivid into her mind, its edges sharp with fresh grief – and now she felt as if she was one of them, held in place and studied from all angles. But the Doctor simply muffled a yawn of his own, face crinkling into an understanding smile, and she knew she had been released. “Quite right. Or perhaps it’s rather early.” He turned to fumble his way back up the corridor, and Victoria could not help but smile. She had never seen him quite so half-asleep before, and there was something almost endearing about the exaggerated clumsiness of his movements. “Come along, Jamie. We shouldn’t keep Victoria up any longer.”

“Aye, I won’t be a minute.” Jamie shrugged at Victoria, smiling as if to say what-can-you-do. “He gets like this when he’s warm, you know.”

“Oh.” Victoria tried to nod as if she understood, but something in Jamie’s face told her that he did not believe her. He was an expert in pretending to understand, she supposed. It was only to be expected that he would see through her own clumsy attempt. “Jamie...” She clenched her teeth, trying to steel herself to spit out the truth. Everything in her was screaming that she should walk away – not bother him with such childish concerns – that she ought to be brave. She had always been brave, after all, or so everyone had told her. Ever since her father had agreed to re-hang her mother’s portrait. Ever since her mother had died. Why should she stop now?

“Have ye been having nightmares?”

Jamie’s words cut through her thoughts, startling her back to the present. It took a minute for them to fully sink in, and she stared at him, her mouth moving but no sound coming out. “Why would I be having nightmares?” she managed at last. “Do you think I’m scared of something?”

He shrugged. “Can’t imagine those Daleks treated ye too well.”

Again she found herself surprised into silence. “N- no,” she said quietly. “They didn’t. But I’m fine,” she added hastily. “There’s no need for you to worry.”

“Aye, well, I’ll be sure not to. Just thought ye might like tae talk to someone who’s – ye know -” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “Och, I’m no good at this. The Doctor’s better than I am.” She frowned up at him. “Just – me too. That’s all.”

“I don’t need to talk to anyone.” The weight of his words sunk in just a fraction too late. “Wh – _you_? Really?”

Jamie’s mouth twitched into a small, bitter smile. “I met the Doctor in the middle of a war, ye know.”

“Well, yes -” She struggled to grasp the right words, painfully aware of her reddening cheeks. All this time she had been deriding Jamie’s clumsy attempts to help, thinking of how often he pretended to understand what others were saying. Perhaps she had done him a disservice. “I just never thought you were the type.”

He shrugged. “Neither did I. But it’s – the Doctor helped.”

The laughter that rose unbidden from Victoria’s throat was almost as bitter as Jamie’s expression had been. “I wouldn’t like to trouble him.”

“I thought the same. But he wouldn’t like tae see ye hurtin’, ye know.” Jamie nudged her side gently. “An’ neither do I.”

“I’m not hurting.”

“If ye say so.”

“They’re just silly dreams. I simply ought to be braver.”

Jamie looked as if he would have liked to argue, but simply closed his mouth again with an air of weariness. She winced at that, wishing she could bite the words back into herself where they would stab at her without reaching him. “Aye, alright,” he said at last. “But if ye ever get tired of bein’ brave – ye can always come an’ stay with us.”

She gaped at him. “Jamie McCrimmon!” It was odd, she thought – how Jamie could be a touchstone of familiarity in one moment, then completely alien in the next. “It wouldn’t be proper.”

Rocking back on his heels, he held his hands up. “I’m just offerin’,” he said hastily. “I wouldnae like ye tae be feelin’ - like you’re alone, or somethin’, just ‘cause ye dinnae want tae bother us.”

She nodded curtly, but her alarm was quickly thawing into affection. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

He pressed his lips together in something that might almost have been a smile were it not for the worry in his eyes. “Good. Ye dinnae always have tae be brave, ye know.” His words struck at something hollow inside her, resounding around the thoughts she had pressed into herself for so long. She opened her mouth to say something, to tell him that bravery was all she knew, but he spoke before she could. “It didnae go so well for me.”

“Jamie!” The shout made Victoria jump, her scalp prickling with the shock of it. Halfway down the corridor, the Doctor was sticking his head out from behind a door. “Aren’t you coming?”

“Aye, aye, I’m comin’.” Exchanging a final exasperated glance with Victoria, Jamie turned to wander down the corridor. She was sure the two of them were pulling some sort of faces at each other, but in the half-light it was too hard to tell what they might be thinking. As they closed the door behind them, she wondered if she should go with them, give in to the urge to sleep bundled up beside someone who would watch over her, but something kept her rooted to the spot.

Instead she strode off towards her bedroom, back straight and steps carefully even. She smoothed down her bed covers and settled her glass on her bedside table, casting her eye over her handiwork when she was done. A presentable enough image, if not quite as perfect as a painting. But when she made to pull back the covers and clamber into bed, something stayed her hand.

Turning back to her dresser, she picked up the picture she had turned down earlier and set it upright again.

She settled herself back into bed, knees pulled up to her chest and blankets pooled around her hips. Her own face stared back at her from the picture – not that of a ghost, but of a girl, carefree and laughing and loved, and she smiled back at herself.


End file.
